"Driving when tired" recommendations

Some bright spark in the upper echelons of management at my work has decided they can save time and money by cutting out travelling time within work hours.

Effectively, my team's job involves visiting clients all over the UK and northern Ireland. We had, in the past, been given a reasonable amount of "travelling time" within work hours, depending on the distance. EG if you were travelling 150 miles, you'd have a half day to travel up, if it was 300, a whole day, etc.

Now that they're trying to reduce this, I've been tasked to put a case together against it and prevent them from cutting it. I've considered the obvious things such as that we cannot be asked to speed on the job and that we must take the neccessary rest breaks etc. and these must be factored into the "journey time", rather than putting in locations in (the ever-optomisitic) multi-map and saying things like, "Cardiff to Hartlepool? That'll be 5 hours... half a day's travelling"

To make my case stronger I want to quote some government stats (can't argue with some quoted out of context stats, can you ?). I've been looking for some guidelines on how long you should rest for/how often and what's the most you should drive for in one spell, etc. but all I can find is "Think"'s recommendation that you should have a 15 minute break every 2 hours. It doesn't say anything about how (presumably) these breaks should become longer and more frequent the longer you drive for.

The ideal would be some legislative "thou shalt not drive more than ....", but I recognise it's likely to be guidelines, but even so, any links/pointers on where to look would be much appreciated.

Another one that would be useful would be "average speed" (for cars primarily- I've already said I ride my bike for my benefit, not to do more work for the company) on a motorway/in general? I remember reading something shocking like the average speed of the average car was 19.2 mph or something similar. Any links to figures like that would be a great help. I've noticed in cars I've had with trip computers that it seems to be around 40mph when you're on the motorway, due to all the stop starting, jams, etc. but again, official figures are a lot better than what I claim.

Thanks in advance.

[Red ones]

As a first port of call I think you should read INDG382

I will do some digging for you too!

[Essex of Essex]

We used to be asked to drive to and from duties, after the chap fell asleep and drove the land-rover and trailer on to the railway line things were reviewed. Now we can't be scheduled to drive ourselves home, and if a duty exceeds 15 hours we are entitled to a hotel even at base to rest prior to driving home.

This was agreed after formal risk assessments and the conclusion was that the company had a "duty of care" so couldn't require us to drive when tired. In an attempt to get round this they now authorise an expense claim for use of private cars rather than a hire car, because if you choose to drive home in your own car then that is your choice and your right.

[Blue Flame]

hmm.

That's a slightly different standpoint from ours. If I travel before 08:30 or after 17:00 i get paid travel time (ie plain time not overtime rates). Tendency is for managers to try and push you along travelling during the day cos it stays out the travel cost budget.

All this whilst at the same time expecting the productivity to stay at a level assuming you had been sat at the desk all day

Don't know what the law says about whether the employer is required to pay you for the time spent in the car after hours esp if you are going to or coming from visiting a client/satellite office but ours does.

Edit. For clarification the above relates to travelling to a place other than your deisgnated base location.

[timwilky]

OK Confession time

A few years ago I was working allmost full time in Rugby. I would leave home at 5.00am, get to Rugby about 7:30, grab some breccy and into work until about 6.0PM at which time I would drive home. I would get back about 8:30, have some tea, watch a bit of the news and in bed for about 10:30 absolutely knackered.

I did it for about 3 years.

1) It almost killed me. I finally ended up in hospital.
2) It almost killed me. One Friday I was in a jam from hell. It had taken me 2 hours to get from Rugby to Birmingam and I fell asleep at the wheel. I knew I was in trouble, I was determined to come off at Hilton Park and get an hours sleep. 100yds before the exit, I ran into the back of the car in front. OK it was only at about 2MPH and nobody was hurt, but still it happened.
3) I nearly ended up divorced. My wife complained I was never at home and when I was I was too tired to do anything.

My employers attitude was I should stay in a hotel during the week. Hang on. I don't expect to only see my wife & family at weekends, and don't want to live out of hotel bars.

In my case I was working about 10 hour days with a further 5 hours a day driving. I have now changed the way that I work. Yes I still do this silly work/travel lark. But only for a few weeks and then a few weeks of working from home with no travel.

it might be worth likeing the long driving hours to those restrictions imposed on lorry drivers?

obvioulsy no direct comparrissons can be taken but driving is driving isnt !

look up the:

Working Time Directive

it will give you some interesting info, it's had a big impact on the logistics industry, and you can draw comparisons between what you do and lorry drivers, as if it isn't legislation yet...it will be! You gotta love Eurocrats! Best practise, corperate responsibilty, yada yada...

I don't get any travelling time and it is expected to come out of my own personal time, e.g. full days work then start travel...i do get a hotel room if I driving to scotland or somewhere over 3 or 4 hours, but I still have to travel in the eveing whilst not being paid!

The joys of a saleried wage!

DOH!

To be honest 150 miles does not take half a working day, unless there is severe traffic. I dunno who you work for but I reakon you may have to be realistic with your report, and try and call a comprimise. I find greenflag times are not too far off the mark in the main. Obviosuly there are exceptions!

Originally Posted by Dangle_kt

To be honest 150 miles does not take half a working day, unless there is severe traffic. I dunno who you work for but I reakon you may have to be realistic with your report, and try and call a comprimise. I find greenflag times are not too far off the mark in the main. Obviosuly there are exceptions!

RE travelling times. Sorry, I realise what I said was rather unclear. There were no fixed guidelines, but people used to leave at an appropriate time, but if it was say, 150 miles, we'd not have any job booked in for the afternoon (we'd actually only set off 2.5 hours before the end of work- we'd find other stuff to do, but nothing that could run on). We'd not have the whole afternoon off.

One of my biggest gripes is that recently they have given us jobs to do in the morning before an afternoon's travelling. I one instance, this job that should have been finished at noon ran on till 8pm and I ended up arriving at the hotel at midnight.

I agree we have to be reasonable- I think some of the team have brought this on us by taking the Michael a bit and doing SFA on any day where they travel.

I'm supprised someone hasn't already... but I can't resist, so in light of the subject...






DONT!






That taxi outside will be for me then....

Apart from the working time directive, you might be wise to seek the view of the local HSE office.

Seems like a very retrograde step to me and other places are phasing it out.